Latest Intestinal Ultrasound Advancements In Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Abstract

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) treatment has evolved from monitoring clinical symptoms to targeting objective measurements of mucosal healing with endoscopic and radiologic imaging. It is well known that clinical symptoms do not match disease severity. Frequent evaluation with radiologic imaging is now the standard of care. Although Selecting Therapeutic Targets in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (STRIDE-II) recommendations do not list radiographic targets as an endpoint due to the “limited ability of the currently available treatments to achieve transmural healing,” this will likely evolve over time particularly with the rapidly growing uptake of intestinal ultrasound (IUS) in clinical trials. For the time being, imaging is considered as an “adjuvant assessment rather than a formal treatment target.”